Ella Se Va
by ianii
Summary: Luffy is now the Pirate King, but even kings cannot hold on to everything. What the sea giveth, it may taketh away. [Oneshot, LuffyNami]


**Ella Se Va**

"Leaving?" He echoed. His eyes were wide and blank, the word—or maybe just the meaning of it—foreign to him. "What do you mean, 'leaving'?"

Nami took a deep breath. Was it hard for her to say it? I may have been. Luffy would never know. What would it take to make him understand? "I'm leaving. I'm leaving the ship, the crew, never coming back. I'll leave half my treasure to you, as thanks, but I'm leaving."

Luffy, uncharacteristically, was sitting behind a neat desk with no traces of any mess. It was his desk, a new one, that Nami had helped pick out at a store. The trademark straw hat was hiding his eyes in shadow as he looked at the papers, the meaningless papers that he always got someone else to do anyway. It seemed that he got it this time. "Why, Nami?"

"I'm going back. I'm going to see Nojiko and the others, and then I'm going off to do my own thing. I've had enough of the sea." Her mouth was set in a stubborn frown.

His response was automatic: "But you're our navigator-"

"Luffy, you're the goddamn Pirate King! You can get your own navigator," Nami interrupted, biting her lip, letting on that it was much more difficult for her than she first showed off.

More of that awkward silence. Luffy was at a loss for words. Well, he had never really had much of a vocabulary to begin with, having gotten most of his speeches directly from his idol, Shanks, or from his heart. So he waited, waited for the phrases and cliché words to come together, but they never came. For once, he couldn't think of something to say. He had no way of expressing himself. He thought back in the past, what had swayed whom and when. His other instinct he had used all along: violence, but the answer to that was obvious.

"Money," He said, monotonously. That was something Nami liked, right?

"No."

"All of the money on this ship," he offered again, dragging one of the untouched quills over to him, trying to remember how to write a check.

"Luffy, no! Stop it!"

He froze as though slapped, cringing. He couldn't bring himself to look at her, his navigator. For so long he's called her that, but now he's just not sure what to call her. He supposed she had her own entity now. She wasn't his navigator, she was Nami. Nami was now leaving him, and the sea. Why?

"Luffy, please. Don't make this harder than it already is. Please," She wouldn't look at him either, instead standing awkwardly in his office, alone. "I'm leaving for good. I'm going home, but don't even try to find me there, because then I'm going to leave again."

"Nami…" He found that it was all he could say. _Nami is her name… not 'navigator'. _The inkwell fell from his hands and onto the brand new desk, staining it, probably for good.

After a few more minutes of silence, she spoke again, in her formal, cold voice again. "Well, I left the half of my treasure I'm giving you in the safe. You'll find it in a bag there. I'm going to go now. I'm sorry." She turned on her heel and stomped out of the room.

With the slam of the door, Monkey D. Luffy crumpled. He slammed his fists down on the table, pulled at his hair and worried at his straw hat. Why was she telling him just now? She was leaving in five minutes, getting off the dock at Alabasta, going to catch a ride back to East Blue from there. What was wrong? If she wanted to visit, why wouldn't she let him take her back? He would do it in a minute, if she let him. Did Nami hate this ship that much? Luffy thought, with dread, that maybe he was acquiring the same habits with Nami as Arlong had. Maybe he was being to controlling. With that thought, he threw his chair into the wall. Nami was leaving because of him! He never hated himself more. All this time, Luffy had lived without regret, and now he knew he did something wrong and despised himself for it. Why did he have to be such an idiot?

There was a knock at the door. "Luffy?" It was Sanji. "Nami's leaving now. I think you should go say goodbye."

Luffy didn't say anything. His chair was halfway across the sterile, lifeless room, so he sat in a corner. He could feel the waves rolling against the boat, swaying it back and forth, hypnotically. The ocean was his love, and ever since he was seven, Luffy had been having an affair with its terrors, its joys and the creatures that lived within. His whole life, the ocean was the only thing that gave him comfort, knowing that it would always be there and always be a constant factor. This time, the waves weren't acting as a friend, bringing him adventures and taking him to exciting places, but a thief, stealing away something Luffy hadn't known to be a treasure until just now.

"Luffy?" Sanji repeated, his voice a tad more concerned than it had been before. "I'm coming in, okay, buddy?"

"No," Luffy croaked. "I'm coming out." He decided he would not be a captor. He would not be like the person he hated. He would not be a captor, a kidnapper, or whatever you want to call it. That is not him. The Pirate King slowly got to his feet, feeling heavy and slow. He dragged his feet sluggishly over the hardwood floor, reluctantly heading to where he was most needed.

Sanji never mentioned the disarrayed state the Captain's office was in.

Luffy was never calmer in his life as he walked across the deck, calmly, controlled, and frighteningly serious. He gripped his hat in his left hand as he marched to the gathering at the front end of the ship. He was pacing himself.

"You keep going that slow, she'll be gone by the time you get there," Sanji said, and he fished out some matches and lit up another cigarette. He watched his captain pause and waited for him to speak. There was definitely something wrong going on here. "What is it?"

"Sanji?"

"Yeah?"

"Was I… Am I a bad captain?"

His question was, for lack of a better word, shocking. In all the time he'd been working under him, Sanji could not recall a time where Luffy doubted his own leadership skills. "Luffy, no way, you've got something wrong with you. C'mon, I've gotta go tell Chop--"

"No, Sanji. Was I a bad captain to Nami? Was I wrong to want to keep her here?"

Sanji stared. He tried to form the words, hoping to whatever god was out there that he wouldn't stumble. "Luffy, you've always been a great captain. To all of us. You led us perfectly; don't ever let yourself think otherwise. It's just that everyone is different, and Nami needs some changes sometimes. She was happy the entire time she was here, she just needs a vacation."

"But she didn't say 'vacation'!" Luffy protested. "She said she was leaving forever!"

"Even she doesn't know the meaning of her own words. She'll be back. After all," Sanji boasted, poking himself in the chest with his thumb, "Who could leave _this_ hunk of man behind?" After few more moments, he spoke again. "If you don't hurry your ass up, she'll be gone."

Luffy's feet pounded over the wood as he ran forward, as fast as he could. The sea was no longer against him; it was back on his side. The salty wind engulfed him, reminding him of where he belonged. He was the Pirate King, and no dumb bitch would take that away from him. However, if he could not keep the aforementioned dumb bitch, he would at _least_ make sure she came back. So the mind of Luffy works.

"Hey! Nami!"

The dumb bitch was already off the boat, on the pier, walking away into the crowd, she was everywhere but on the deck. But that was okay, Luffy thought, watching her turn around, look through the people for the voice calling her name. It was all okay. The sea would bring her back to him.

He launched himself off the dock, shouting at people to clear the way so he could land properly. He assaulted the people around him in a desperate attempt to get through. The stable ground set him off for a minute, though, and he swayed forward unsteadily. Luffy still couldn't get his land legs right away.

"Nami!"

"Luffy?" Her face, her perfect face, swiftly turned from surprise to some twisted kind of bitter, negative emotion. "Luffy, what are you doing here?"

He grinned. "Sorry," He told her. "Sorry I wasn't a good captain. Anyway, here," He took off his straw hat and plopped it on her head. "It doesn't belong to me, though. But I bet you'd keep better care of it than me. I mean, you're the one who always fixed it when I got careless and let it break." He bent down to look at her face from beneath the brim. "So keep it safe, okay?"

"Luffy…"

He flashed his million dollar smile and backed away into the crowded docks, heading back to his own ship again. "Don't let anyone mess around with you, Nami! If they do, come and tell me. You'll know how to find me."

Nami's tears were hidden from the bright Alabasta sun, hidden from the public, hidden from Luffy himself under the battered straw hat.

* * *

"Hey, Chopper." 

"Eh? Yes, Luffy?"

"I want a tattoo."

"A tattoo!" The small reindeer exclaimed. "What do you want a tattoo for?"

"A reminder." Luffy continued to stare at the vast ocean in front of the boat, giving his short answers.

"A reminder… of what?" Chopper muttered to himself, and then louder, "What do you want it of?"

"A pinwheel. A pinwheel with an orange. I mean tangerine. Whatever, they both look the same." Luffy explained, agitatedly. He then gestured to his shoulder. "Right here."

Chopper blinked. Had he been more observant, he would have remembered the significance of the design, but alas, he was not. Instead, he continued to go about his business, telling his captain that he should think about a tattoo before getting one first.

Luffy knew that he didn't have to think about it.

The sea was Monkey D. Luffy's first love. The movement, the smell, the taste, all of it was intoxicating, consuming his whole conscious and unconscious mind like a drug. It was both constant and ever changing, with the winds and the weather and the unknown entities always at hand, never predictable. The tide brought him knew things, and the undertow took him to others, and brought about the best friends he would ever come to know.

If the sea was his first love, he knew what his second was, and knew that the sea would bring her back to him, even as it took her away.

**El Extremo **

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A/N: First of all, I am a language nerd. I have a fetish of naming stories in different languages. This is the first one I put on here, but yeah. You get the idea. Spanish hardxcore, yo!1111!etc.

...Anyway. "Ella se va" means 'she leaves'. I was going to do 'she left', but it didn't sound quite as awesome. (ella fue, anyone?)

In other news, I got the idea for this in the last five minutes of Chemistry, class, then obsessed over it the rest of the school day. If I wasn't in such a hurry to just get the damn thing over with, I could have worked on it better and maybe-- just maybe-- I might have made it sound better. I have a small, stubby vocabulary. Ugh. Anyway, R+R, I love you goodbye. Long live LuffyNami. (Or not, I'm starting to get addicted to Luffy/Zoro. D: Gack! Where has the het love gone!)


End file.
